Stephen King's idea for It came from a favorite childhood image: the entire cast of the Bugs Bunny Show coming on at the beginning. He thought of bringing on all the monsters, one last time: Dracula, Frankenstein's creature, the Werewolf, the Crawling Eye, Rodan, It Came from Outer Space.

It is about a group of adults who were once troubled children in the late '50s--"The Losers." One of them is a best selling horror writer much like Stephen King (or his friend and collaborator Peter Straub). In order to defeat the protean "It" that threatens their hometown, they have to go back- -not only to the town itself, but deep into their childhood memories, to regain the talent for magic they once had. King says It is for "the buried child in us, but I'm writing for the grown-up, too. I want grown-ups to look at the child long enough to be able to give him up."

This huge, baggy beast of a novel is a favorite of Stephen King fans--second in popularity only to The Stand. Perhaps longtime fans develop mental filters for King's sloppy storytelling to tune out the repetitions and silliness. King is like the pointillist painter Seurat: if you stand too close to the little dots, the picture falls apart, and it looks meaningless. That's why he makes the storyscape so big--to take you up to that macro-level where you like the book in spite of its flaws. --Fiona Webster

'One of the great storytellers of our time' -- Guardian 'A writer of excellence...King is one of the most fertile storytellers of the modern novel...brilliantly done' -- The Sunday Times 'His finest to date!Hardly a page is without its shocks and surprises yet King still manages to give us a terrifying climax' -- Yorkshire Post

King's newest is a gargantuan summer sausage, at 1144 pages his largest yet, and is made of the same spiceless grindings as ever: banal characters spewing sawdust dialogue as they blunder about his dark butcher shop. The horror this time out is from beyond the universe, a kind of impossible-to-define malevolence that has holed up in the sewers under the New England town of Derry. The It sustains itself by feeding on fear-charged human meat - mainly children. To achieve the maximum saturation of adrenalin in its victims, It presents itself sometimes as an adorable, balloon-bearing clown which then turns into the most horrible personal vision that the victims can fear. The novel's most lovingly drawn settings are the endless, lightless, muck-filled sewage tunnels into which it draws its victims. Can an entire city - like Derry - be haunted? King asks. Say, by some supergigantic, extragalactic, pregnant spider that now lives in the sewers under the waterworks and sends its evil mind up through the bathtub drain, or any drain, for its victims? In 1741, everyone in Derry township just disappeared - no bones, no bodies - and every 27 years since then something catastrophic has happened in Derry. In 1930, 170 children disappeared. The Horror behind the horrors, though, was first discovered some 27 years ago (in 1958, when Derry was in the grip of a murder spree) by a band of seven fear-ridden children known as the Losers, who entered the drains in search of It. And It they found, behind a tiny door like the one into Alice's garden. But what they found was so horrible that they soon began forgetting it. Now, in 1985, these children are a horror novelist, an accountant, a disc jockey, an architect, a dress designer, the owner of a Manhattan limousine service, and the unofficial Derry town historian. During their reunion, the Losers again face the cyclical rebirth of the town's haunting, which again launches them into the drains. This time they meet It's many projections (as an enormous, tentacled, throbbing eyeball, as a kind of pterodactyl, etc.) before going through the small door one last time to meet. . .Mama Spider! The King of the Pulps smiles and shuffles as he punches out his vulgarian allegory, but he too often sounds bored, as if whipping himself on with his favorite Kirin beer for zip. (Kirkus Reviews)

?A writer of excellence...King is one of the most fertile storytellers of the modern novel...brilliantly done?

It was the children who saw - and felt - what made the town so horribly different. In the storm drains and sewers 'It' lurked, taking the shape of every nightmare, each one's deepest dread. As the children grow up and move away, the horror of 'It' is buried deep - until they are called back.

It was the children who saw - and felt - what made the town so horribly different. In the storm drains and sewers 'It' lurked, taking the shape of every nightmare, each one's deepest dread. As the children grow up and move away, the horror of 'It' is buried deep - until they are called back.

Stephen King is the bestselling author of more than thirty books of which the most recent are THE GIRL WHO LOVED TOM GORDON, HEARTS IN ATLANTIS and his non-fiction book ON WRITING. He lives with his wife, the novelist Tabitha King, in Bangor, Maine.

2008-08-19 Far too long

I enjoyed the tv movie of this despite the 2nd half being rather crap, everyone went on about how much the better the book was. I finally got round to reading it recently and I wish I hadn't bothered.
Far too much description of such simple things. The giant bird, werewolf and spider were ridiculous.
The biggest complaint however is the description of the 11yr old children having group sex in the sewers, it had nothing to do with story and in no way contributed to it. The mere hint by Bev earlier on in the book was enough.
The ending was a big let down too. We didn't really get a proper ending for anyone but Bill and Audra and even that was far too strung out.
What about poor Eddie's wife?
All in all, a massive let down, the book could've easily been cut down to half the size it is!